001i now call to order the regularly scheduled board meeting for May 8 2025 of the Lake Avis Unified School District roll call please here here here we will now have a moment of silent prayer or private reflection amen would you please stand for the pledge of allegiance i aliance something new has some student leaders tonight with us and future school so here I have Donovan told me math problems and her little sister right to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all good job [Applause] sorry it's something new we are doing and we are excited to have our students leading us in the pledge at this time we'll have spotlights and recognitions at this time um
002Lake Havasu High School student recognition for the ACT perfect score [Applause] mr president members of the board Colin come on up and join me [Applause] all right it is not every day we get to celebrate a truly extraord extraordinary academic accomplishment but today is one of those special moments it is my great pleasure to introduce someone whose hard work discipline and intellectual curiosity have earned him a place among top achievers in the nation please join me in congratulating Colin Miller a dedicated student who recently achieved a perfect score of 36 on the ACT exam [Music] to put that into perspective each year more than a million students take the ACT and less than half of 1% earn a perfect score that's not just impressive it's rare remarkable and reflects academic talent and a mindset geared
003toward geared towards excellence colin didn't just wake up one day and magically know all the answers or did he no this achievement is the result of countless hours of preparation persistence in the face of challenges and an unwavering commitment of to learning and of course his parents drive [Applause] whether it was mastering math problems analyzing reading passages or fine-tuning his grammar rules he approached every section with focus determination and a plan we will see if he'll share that in a few moments but what makes Colin truly exceptional goes beyond his test score he brings that same dedication to the classroom shows kindness to his peers and represents the best of what our school stands for colin Miller your achievement is a source of pride not just for you and your family but for for all
004of us here you've shown us what's possible when talent meets dedication you're incredibly We are incredibly proud of you congratulations on this amazing milestone [Applause] okay so before I turn the mic over to Colin I I did say in here we'll see if he'll share his tactic so in classes it is shared some some testing strategies and and he took uh great advantage of one of them so we'll see if he can share that um so as as he was talking about with um test taking strategies um obviously studying and paying attention in classes and all that is very important to getting scores like this but to reach that next level for anybody who you know wants to teach or you know share strategies for how to get scores like this in the future you
005know really studying the test is very important to reaching that highest level of achievement and you know especially with things like the ACT it's a test in which all you know every single letter choice appears the same number of times on the test so utilizing that to my advantage whenever I need to guess and guessing the one with the highest chance of you know being correct is always very important but you know more importantly I'd love to take a moment to uh give thanks to some of those who have helped me reach this accomplishment first and foremost my family i like to say that I get my uh creativity from my mother and you know my logistical aptitude from my father but it's not as simple as that whatever combination of genes and experiences that
006you two have bestowed upon me is nothing short of perfect or at least I see it to be so and no words or list of finite length can truly do justice to the life of discovery and learning that you guys have built for me so thank you secondly I'd like to thank the educators in my life my teachers thought throughout my high school tenure have instilled in me the necessary knowledge to excel in academics as well as achieve scores such as these another huge thanks to my English teachers i have found English to be one of the subjects that I struggle most in however through the teachings and presences of teachers such as Mr mskeetti Mr bogus and truthfully every English teacher up to this point i have found enjoyment and excellence in that area
007of study finally to my early educators the greatest scholastic influence influences I could have ever hoped for sure 2 plus two may not have been on the ACT but looking back that isn't truly what they taught me no teachers like Mrs bagby Mrs murphy Mrs tunaman Mrs hammer and Mrs vesley taught me much more than that and something much greater to enjoy learning and to find success in the fruits of curiosity both the academic and extracurricular influences that teachers like Mrs vesley have had taken me to heights I never would have hoped to reach without them and I owe my deepest appreciation to them these teachers deserve just as much if not more credit for my accomplishments and I owe to them any potential life of scholastic endeavor I may have ahead of me there's
008no psychological advancement without the brilliant minds to facilitate it thank you [Applause] congratulations great job all right congratulations now for our superintendent recognition of our 2025 retirees Dr skinner you got me um thank you for um recognizing efforts of the people in this room it is our ultimate passion to see all of our students achieve their own personal greatness so I just a little touch by forgive me and tonight we're going to start by recognizing another one of Jamaica's finest um if I could have Miss KD our reading interventionist make her way to this podium today we gather to celebrate the incredible career of Miss Rita KD who is retiring after 24 years of dedicated service to our district beginning her teaching journey in 1986 and then joining us in 2001 Rita has been a
009consistent force in helping every student succeed as our reading interventionist Rita has gone above and beyond supporting struggling readers through one-on-one sessions connecting students with outside resources and using targeted strategies she has helped countless students find success she led our reading intervention program with passion and skill ensuring students received the help they needed and that our team worked together seamlessly her calm kind and goal oriented approach has made her more than just a colleague she's been a trusted partner to staff and a champion for students whether working directly with children or supporting teachers so sorry rita has elevated the role of literacy in every corner of Jamaica Elementary a memorable moment in her career came when she was honored as teacher of the year a welldeserved recognition she accepted with humility and surprise lena your
010dedication and heart have left the last city mark thank you for your unwavering commitment to our students and community we wish you very best in retirement may it be filled with peace joy and new adventures with your beloved grandbabies congratulations on an extraordinary career sorry there but Um we had a few other retirees this evening that were unable to join us some of them have relocated and some of them had other commitments um but we did also want to thank uh Danny Morgan our uh facility service person from Ora Grande Classical Academy um Jack Parnell our warehouse assistant Miss Diana Paige um our Havupi media assistant and Guadalupe Ramirez our custodian from the middle school um we just appreciate the the dedication the heart the the perseverance the commitment that each and every one of
011these members has contributed to our schools um so even though they're not here we just want to make sure that they know they are thanked and loved and appreciated thank you at this time I'd like to welcome Lake Havisu City Education Association President Carol Noacowski am I now am I on okay sorry so uh HB219 it requires uh before 202526 school year the Arizona Department of Ed uh to compile and post on AD's website information regarding um water safety but down at the bottom it will show you number two requires each school district and charter beginning 2526 school year to provide each parent who initially enrolls a child in the school district or charter the web page address for water safety information as a sorry my mic wasn't on but we do offer Kinder Swim
012and kindergarten but this also includes new students also so we would want to make sure we're including them the other one is HB2774 which we are focusing on today which I noticed um on our agenda it's the uh school safety proposals and assessment plans um it expands the school safety program to support costs of placing school safety officers and the establishing an alternative program proposal process to support the cost of purchasing safety equipment and infrastructure improvements as specified so if we turn the page you will see down at the bottom of the second it says emergency response plan requirements um requires each school district and charter that receives a program approval and monies to develop an emergency response plan contact with safety a school safety assessment provider and such so I just wanted to make
013sure you um we all were aware that these requirements have been uh passed and put in place and then and then there is the ongoing concern of Proposition 123 10 years ago Aea and a coalition of organizations from across the political spectrum came together to pass Proposition 123 including myself and our at the time LD30 but now LD uh five legislators we sat down at the table we had many discussions on what this was going to look like for our community and for our state it was a major investment in Arizona public schools educator salaries and the future of our state proposition 123 as stated before is scheduled to expire soon and unfortunately some of our legislators are debating how to renew this funding once a proposal is decided upon it will move on to
014the Arizona voters to approve it through a ballot measure our AA which also includes LHCA believe it is in the best option for Arizona educators that we have a clean renewal of Prop 123 with a clean renewal school districts would be able to continue using Prop 123 funding to raise salaries for educators support professional development expand student programs and maintain school buildings and meet the other needs unfortunately instead of simply just renewing Prop 123 some members of our Arizona legislators are proposing a different plan that would limit our investment on public schools to permanently expand Arizona billion dollar voucher program under the proposal Prop 123 would not ensure that the fundings go to all employees which includes our educational support staff as well as our classroom teachers we don't have the final language yet but
015reports indicate that our ESPs would largely be excluded and possibly some of the certified staff again it seems to be the main goal of the new proposal is to pro protect the vouchers the ESA vouchers despite the lack of accountability and the outofc control costs associated with ESAs the new proposal would create a constitutional right for vouchers if this becomes law it would nearly be impossible to ever reform them we expect legislators to introduce the full text of the voucher uh focus proposal next week aa is focused on protecting funding for our schools but the future of Prop 123 will be on the ballot and we need to be ready and we encourage everyone to reach out to our L LD5 legislators and request a clean renewal on 123 prop 123 and I will end
016with happy appreciation week where we honor educators within the last weeks of school in hopes it encourages them to make it to the end and a meme I recently read imagine being this tired and still showing up every day that's teacher in May what a year it has been and even the end is even though the end is near we still have a lot of things to accomplish in the next two weeks we finalize grades we have finals we have promotions and graduations then on May 23rd we can breathe and we can celebrate all that we have accomplished thank you thank you Carol at this time we have consent agenda item 4.1 uh I'm sorry no 3.1 call to the public at this time we can give a couple moments for those who are leaving
017thank you for being here this evening all right now at this time item 3.1 call to the public president excuse me President Rose Dr skinner is it visible that would perfect all right oh that's Oh it's only a minute i was You get three minutes okay thank you i'm like I got to read okay also just a note if time expires whenever you're speaking um you can just submit your entire remarks to the entire board via email president Rose Dr skinner members of the school board and members of the community thank you for this opportunity to share my thoughts about the district's gifted program my highest priority tonight is to convince you that not only should the self-contained gifted program remain but it must continue as an example of an outstanding student service that few
018districts provide i have the p perspective of a mother with three gifted children that are students in the Lake Havsu Unified School District i am also a former gifted student i am a current third grade teacher in the district and I have taught a cohort of gifted students this is only my third year as the elementary school teacher previously I served in the US Air Force then I worked in the Washington DC with Department of Defense executives regarding worldwide missions my main mission as a mother is to provide opportunities for growth and success for my children the gifted program provides these opportunities far beyond anything I could do independently without the self-contained gifted program at Starland my mother mission is a sorry excuse me my main mission as a mother would be limited at best
019in my classroom this year I told my students I believe they will see a manned mission to the to Mars in their lifetime that these space travelers would not get there without identifying that arriving safely on Mars is the mission statement what is the mission statement of our district's gifted program are we shooting for the moon are we shooting for Mars and beyond the Starland self-contained gifting program is a mission to Mars they have endorsed teachers that have a training and experience to work with neurodeivergent students they have the entire school day to encourage and accommodate those students unique abilities and deficits i've taught a cohort program the students were able to work with each other and challenge each other but I was unable to provide a gifted environment their needs could not be my
020main priority i even teach my own daughter this year who tested gifted in second grade she told me she feels chained to the weight of the other students she looks forward to soaring in the gifted program or her gifted rockets will carry her as far as she desires i view the pull out of co-hop programs as missions to the moon our missions to the moon exciting and important absolutely but we've already been to the moon i want a gifted mission statement that enables my children and my students to go beyond when I told my fifth grade son about the possibility of a pullout program he told me "Sounds like most of the time you're not even gifted." He's right that's how he would be treated gifted children are not gifted some of the time they
021are gifted all of the time my son felt isolated and mocked through third grade he was so scared of group work that he threatened to hit his fourth grade teacher so he could get out of working in a group now he is thrilled to share with his entire class how he solved the math problems he said it know he knows his classmates understand him and think differently too i'm here tonight to tell you thank you for my eighth grader and my fifth grader that they can reach Mars and beyond i am here begging you that my third grader has the same opportunity thank you thank you hello for those of you who don't know me my name is Alice Mills i attend Thunderbolt Middle School and I'm the daughter of Mrs mills who teaches at
022Starline i have been gifted in the honors program since fourth grade and I can without a doubt tell you that they have saved my life before I get into the uncomfortable reality of growing up as a neurody diverent person I want to preface this with how how the gifted program has helped my education itself i am and always have been a very fast learner and showed great knowledge in ELA math and science before I even started preschool from the outside looking at me seems incredible school must be so easy for you they said but it made school a nightmare of monotonous and pointless tasks i know these things i thought why should I have to prove it so many times before they believe me i struggled to finish my assignments because I felt like I
023was being punished for being ahead when I got to the program for the first time I wasn't forced to slow down i was finally I was finally able to learn something new for once that can't be achieved with just in just a 1 hour period once a week now that that's off out of the way I'd like to discuss the emotional impact of the gifted program had on me as a nerd diverent person i am mentally disabled i have ADHD and OCD let me give you a walk through what it's like to grow up as a nerd diverent person when you're little you make tons of friends sure you can't figure out social cues but that's okay you're still learning but you won't and you never will over time your mistakes can't be chocked up
024to childishness anymore you're expected to follow rules that not only were never explained to you but you have no semblance of reason for them you're called rude for simply saying or asking things the friends you made in kindergarten become the smart kids smart kids popular kids or heaven forbid the kids who bully people like you you think you have friends but can't tell the difference between friends you think exist you're always the one left behind when I got to the gifted program that all changed i made real friends friends who never told me to just be normal because make just as much sense to them as they did me i didn't even know it was possible to get to be that happy the fact that my old friends didn't want to hang out with me
025it doesn't make them bad people it just makes us different and that's okay but I needed other people like me they're the only ones who listen when I need something that doesn't actually make any sense they sit through my hourong rants about the book I'm writing the same way I sit through their rants about some obscure fanfiction from an obscure spin-off of an obscure game my mental health has taken a bit of a bad turn in recent years and in all honesty without the people I met in the G program I don't know if still be alive right now to a neurotypical person the gift program may seem like special treatment an ego an ego boost or an inconvenience for the workers involved but for us it's the difference between existing and truly living i
026think that the self-contained gift program is the best choice i would I would get the third grade i don't enter the self-contained program i think that the self program is a good choice if the school It'll be like half all right thank all of you for uh sharing your your feedback and we will be discussing that in just a few moments so um now item 4.1 consent agenda need a motion to um accept the consent agenda as presented i second yes yes yes all right at this time item 5.1 discussion items uh safety audit so we wanted to have a discussion tonight safety so at the last board meeting the board had asked about bringing forth um some discussion about safety so is it still Okay sorry so student staff campus safety are top priorities
027for us and it is uh necessary to continually monitor our safety practices and protocols to ensure we are in compliance and assess areas that may require more safety measures at this time Lake Havisu Unified School District is seeking a safety audit to support our efforts to assess current practices and provide guidance on any necessary updates to ensure our students and staff on each campus have a safe educational environment uh the safety audit is intended to provide recommendations uh for improvement of systems options that may be considered um and a couple of those that might be considered as we're kind of going through the audit could be something potentially like a raptor system for visitors that would receive a visitor badge we scan IDs that badge is scanned um and then it checks against sex offender
028registries then prints a visitor badge to be worn at all times on the campus visits um potentially control card access where everyone has a badge that badge lets you into buildings and classrooms this would allow the district to run off the badge quick this would the district to turn off the badge quickly in the event of a theft or loss as opposed to a key system so if we lose our keys we're not having to run and say "Oh we got to re key everything." We just quickly turn off that badge issue another badge so those are just a few ideas again that would all come up in the safety audit then you guys would have that opportunity to review that audit to see what um potential changes um that you want to discover or
029explore more awesome thank you Superintendent this is an item that is extremely important to this board our children are our most precious commodity in this community as well as our staff it's it's keeping everyone safe and ensuring when you're on campus that you're not worried about what could happen or what if this happens that you know that from working at from the high school to the middle school at one of our elementary schools even our staff here at the district office that you are fully protected when you're on campus um and so this is something that we want to open up um to look at working with organizations to come in to do a safety audit and pick that company also there is a potential um I've been told uh of maybe the FBI working
030with us in that as well um and potential for grants also I would like to see our school resource officers be involved in this they are on our campuses they know what our weaknesses are and the things that they deal with on a day-to-day basis and we need them to be involved and need their input um so any discussion from other other members so is the discussion item today us talking about whether we want to go forward and get a bid from another company okay and I do like the FBI idea especially if there's grant money tied to that i think that that is a good option um I do want to that we do have our board has in the past um promoted campus safety and so all of our campuses already do have
031a system where if you are a visitor and you go to the front lobby you have to be buzzed in there isn't any sort of you can just open a door and grant get access to the campus you do have to be let in by um one of our staff members i have been to other campuses and other states that use the Raptor program that's referenced up here and I did like it because um as a visitor you go and you show your driver's license and then they just print out a little sticker badge that you wear and then that makes it very easy for the teachers who are on campus that day to know that you have that you are there and that you are permitted to be there so I think there are
032some good options yeah you know this is something we ran on was you know financial audit which we've done curriculum audit and this is the last thing we'd say we're going to do is that we are um putting the safety we have as a new board member it's our responsibility to understand the security risks of our district of our properties and ensure the safety of your children um so absolutely going forward I'd like to get quotes and see what this can produce and it sounds like the the state legislature is also on par with what we're going to do so hopefully that can bring in additional resources as well best best case scenario we'll get an auditor and they'll say actually what you're doing is just right as it is so right awesome right item
0335.2 student achievement tutoring for students at this time we'll have Christie come up and go through our tutoring proposal good evening President Rose members of the board and community members i'm here this evening on behalf of interim superintendent Skinner to provide an overview of our current K12 tutoring and homework help supports this context will set the stage for a proposed addition aimed at better meeting student needs across the district currently 224 elementary students approximately 10% of our elementary population participate in afterchool tutoring this program is offered at every elementary site and operates two days per week for 1-hour sessions students are asked to commit to the tutoring program for one quarter at a time to promote consistent attendance and sustained academic support each session is structured to dedicate equal time to mathematics and reading instruction
034students are placed in groups of no more than eight and are recommended for participation based on multiple data sources including mimic assessments dibble scores classroom grades state assessment results parent requests and teacher recommendations a distinguishing feature of our elementary tutoring program is the strong collaboration between tutors and classroom teachers tutors maintain consistent communication with teachers through the use of student data sheets that identify instructional needs and monitor progress each student works towards specific teacher assigned academic goals tutors also administer pre and post assessments to measure growth and provide families with quarterly progress reports to ensure accountability and alignment tutors submit lesson plans and attendance records to the sitebased tutoring coordinator on a monthly basis at Thunderbolt Middle School 11 students currently receive targeted tutoring support from four certified teachers students are recommended for participation based
035on classroom performance and mimic assessment data to identify specific learning gaps in mathematics each student is given a preassessment progress is then monitored through the intervention period growth in English language arts is measured through classroombased performance indicators a hallmark of the Thunderbolt program is the highly individualized nature of the support provided with such a small cohort of students and dedicated instructional staff tutors are able to build deep knowledge of each students academic needs strengths and learning goals the individualized attention significantly enhances the quality and impact of the tutoring experience however transportation remains a barrier for many Thunderbolt students who could benefit from this level of academic intervention limiting broader participation at Lake Havsu High School peer-to-peer tutoring is made possible through generous funding from the K12 Foundation this school year 24 students have access support
036through this program in addition to peer tutoring every high school teacher provides 30 minutes of office hours on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays students may also request individual appointment for office hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays office hours offer students timely content specific and personalized academic support these sessions often serve as critical touch points for students allowing them to seek clarification revisit challenging material and strengthen their understanding of course content in order to ensure equitable access zerohour classes were eliminated to allow all students the opportunity to attend office hours across all subject areas this structured teacher-led support has the potential to profoundly impact student success by providing daily access to teachers who understand both the content and the students individual learning context the office hour model supports not only academic achievement but also student confidence and engagement
037next the district recognizes the need to expand and refine academic support beyond their traditional school day in order to more equitably serve our student population the following guiding principles support the rationale for a structured district-wide tutoring and homework help program number one equitable access all students deserve access to highquality academic support regardless of school site schedule or home circumstances number two flexible support a districtcoordinated structure with flexible scheduling allows families and students to access support when it is needed most number three student engagement regular consistent academic support in a welcoming environment increases student confident confidence encourages homework completion and promotes overall achievement academic support the program would provide structured environments where students can receive guidance on homework completion number five partnership potential this initiative opens opportunities to collaborate with local colleges community organizations and nonprofits
038and finally student leadership a peer tutoring model at the secondary level would support the development of leadership and mentoring mentoring skills among students so our proposed model in addition to what we already offer is at the elementary homework help certified staff be available before or after school once a week for 30 minutes for general homework completion help some considerations with this model are tutors may not have knowledge of the students learning profiles whether they have an IEP if they're gifted if they have a 504 attendance would be voluntary which may lead to inconsistent participation there would be limited coordination with the classroom instruction but may result in a disconnect between homework help and actual academic needs and finally the model should not be intended as a replacement for regular school attendance at the middle school
039level we would also offer additional homework help certified staff and the National Junior Honors Society students would be available one morning per week for 30 minutes for supervised homework help considerations with the middle school model are existing staff can implement this model at no additional cost would provide meaningful peer leadership opportunities for students however the peer tutors will need to be trained to ensure integrity of support i.e tutoring not copying um again participation would be voluntary so attendance may be inconsistent and once again the model is not a substitute for regular school attendance finally the high school a tutoring central model we have two different options the Option number one is evening tutoring hub certified teachers and high school student tutors would be available one evening per week from maybe 5 to 700 p.m at
040the Lake Havsu High School Library and would be available to tutor any student in grades 3 through 8 parents or guardians would be required to remain on site with their student considerations with this model are it would provide leadership opportunities for our high school students transportation may be a barrier for some families attendance may be unpredictable and inconsistent extracurriculars often conflict both for students and for tutors jobs sports church it may be difficult to recruit staff with the ability and willingness to tutor across a wide range of grade levels and content hours during the evening hours and finally the second option um at the high school level is afterchool subject specific support so certified Lake Havsu high school teachers would offer tutoring three afternoons per week from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m in the in the
041Lake Havsu High School Career Center with each day focused on a different content area for example Monday would be math Wednesday would be science this tutoring would serve students in grades 7 through 12 considerations with the second option are tutors may not be familiar with student specific courses assignments or instructional pacing it is challenging to match student needs with tutoring expertise because you are a math teacher tutoring algebra looks very different than tutoring geometry tutoring biology looks very different than tutoring chemistry transportation remains a barrier for some families attendance may be inconsistent recruiting and retaining qualified tutors for multiple subject areas may prove difficult and after hours programming requires clear supervision and safety protocols so can you go to the next slide please okay so um our recommendation is to pilot one of these programs
042or possibly all of these programs for one semester and to gather data around some key points um how often are students attending the tutoring session what days of the week are they coming in the mornings or in the evenings how long are they staying 15 minutes 30 minutes an hour which school sites are represented what grade levels and subject areas are most frequently accessed and student and family feedback and that is a um little cost breakdown for you so I will defer any questions you have to Dr skinner thank you so much all right thank you so much Miss Olsson i'm now open for discussion to the board yeah you know I like the proposal um definitely some things to work out on it i'd like to get a work session bring parents in see
043what the feasibility of these things are to them get input back to them before we run a pilot program um definitely like the availability of getting lower you know the elementary middle school more additional support homework support something you touched on was you know they don't have they won't have the basis of you know what are they doing in school or in the coursework um you know high quality tutor is kind of going to be around that i I spent a lot of time in the tutor center the math center the science center University of Utah you take that individual problem and a good tutor is able to help you through that issue you go and get additional support on the per subject matter from your teacher in normal office hours but having that ability
044to go somewhere get homework help uh I found it to be an invaluable tool to get through some of the more difficult subjects matters and especially talking about gifted students you know they're pushing the bounds so having somebody that they can go to for additional help get that extra knowledge uh I think is a fantastic thing so yeah I'd like to to workshop this and uh work a little further before we pilot anything member of Vermont i agree um I did have a question um and it's okay if you don't have like the exact figure but you said that 11 people or 11 students at Thunderbolt took care or took advantage of the tutoring how many people or how many students were recommended and just didn't take advantage okay would you say it's like maybe
045twice that number 10 times that number okay yeah I definitely like to get those numbers how many students have I think think a lot of people could benefit with some additional tutoring so absolutely yeah uh um I love this presentation thank you so much Miss Olsen we um want to support student achievement we want our students to be successful and we want to do everything we can to help them um but I do think it's important that we work out the kinks that are in this um and I believe we also need to have a conversation with our transportation department is there an opportunity potentially to bust these kids home after tutoring you know and and I know we'll hear well that's an additional cost we're here to invest in the kids that's why we're
046here as a district and you know I don't believe in let's find the problem let's look at the problem and come up with the solution to do better for our kids so thank you and I love the idea of a work session yeah so all right item 5.3 the gifted proposal at this time Mrs tunan thank you President Rose and members of the board good evening tonight I'll outline our existing gifted education identification process and programming and then share proposed modifications to our identification process and programming as requested by the board and Dr skinner as we begin discussing our gifted education program it's important to ground our conversation in the state requirements that guide our work arizona Revised Statute 15779.02 establishes two two key mandates for all public school districts first we must identify gifted
047learners in our student population second we must provide appropriate educational programs and services for these identified students while the state requires these elements it gives districts local control over implementation in our case we follow our cycle 5 monitoring scope and sequence that was most recently reapproved by the state board of education the Arizona Department of Education and our school board in 2022 lhusd is scheduled for gifted monitoring during the 2027 2028 school year the state defines gifted education as specialized academic offerings that must be integrated into the regular school day with services embedded within the regular school schedule and commiserate with gifted students abilities and potential our district's responsibility as outlined in this statute includes developing a comprehensive framework that addresses a clear identification process programming designs with integration of services during regular school hours
048and appropriate curriculum modifications and differentiation learning experiences that match our gifted students capabilities this foundation of state requirements help frame both our current practices and any proposed modifications to our program as required by state law if program modifications are made the governing board will need to submit a revised scope and sequence to AD by July 1st of the fiscal year in which the changes are made i want to share two slides of historical data with the board before we examine our current processes and proposed changes my role as the district test coordinator has been to coordinate the nomination process and testing cycle and to proctor the gifted testing at each site i provide no notification of test results to parents and guardians within four weeks of test administration along with information about the district's gifted
049education services in accordance with the state law LHUSD uses the Arizona State Board approved cognitive ability test or the KOAT as our evaluation instrument students are tested using group testing methods and assessed in three areas: verbal quantitative and non-verbal reasoning skills following state statute students who score at or above the 97th percentile in any of these three areas are identified as gifted we take pride in our open nomination process which allows teachers parents guardians administrators counselors and community members to nominate students for gifted testing since 2022 AD has supported our identification efforts by funding universal gifted testing for all second grade students combined with our open nominations this comprehensive approach allows us to evaluate approximately 500 students annually as you can see from the data in this table we've maintained consistent identification efforts over the
050past four years our registration process remains accessible through both an online platform and traditional paper forms available at each school site this table shows um the district's beginning of the year gifted population by grade level for the past four years looking at our current data for the 2425 school year LHUSD has identified 240 students who qualified for gifted services this represents 4% of our total district student population as you can see from the second table we have students identified as gifted at every school site in our district the third table also breaks down how these students qualified whether it's verbal quantitative non-verbal um in multiple areas where they qualified in two areas or as profoundly gifted where they qualified in all three areas the first proposed change addresses the board and Dr skinner's goal to
051expand our gifted identification process to include more grade levels our current testing structure meets the state requirements to provide testing three times per year we provide the universal second grade testing we provide two additional testing windows in the winter and spring for grades 3 through six and case byase testing opportunities for grades K through 1 7 through 12 and we also offer testing to nonLHUSD students upon request our current identification process includes both an appeal process and local norming to ensure additional data points are considered when determining services for students scoring in the 90th to 96th percentile for the 2526 school year we propose to expand our regular testing window to include earlier grade levels the revised schedule will feature a fall testing window for grades one and three through six a winter testing window
052for grades K through 1 and 3 through six and then the continuation of our second grade universal testing as long as AD funding continues for the 2526 school year this expanded schedule offers two key benefits first it allows us to identify gifted learners earlier in their academic careers through a systematic K1 testing using an untimed picturebased assessment second by moving our first testing window to early in fall we can ensure that those identified students are placed appropriately for the current school year rather than waiting for the following year the primary consideration for this expansion is the additional district cost of $17.60 per student tested in addition best practices indicate that the KOAT scores are most valid for up to two years students identified in K through one using the picture-based assessment may need to be
053retested in later grades to obtain updated scores using the standard format to ensure that we have the most accurate information to provide appropriate gifted services that match their developing abilities our next area of focus is gifted programming and services gifted programs and services evaluate the academic integrity for all learners by providing meaningful pathways for students to reach their fullest potential this is achieved with a carefully aligned curriculum spanning K through 12 highly qualified gifted educators and supportive district and building administration lhusd currently offers a continuum of services for our gifted and high achieving students that focuses on continuous growth and engagement while building on itself throughout the grades in grades K through six each site provides enrichment opportunities for both gifted and high achieving students within our multi-tered system of support our MTSS framework starting
054in third grade gifted students that were identified through the second grade testing are cluster grouped at their home schools gifted students in grades four through six have the option to receive full day specialized gifted services at Starline Elementary School in our self-contained um gifted classrooms this program draws gifted students from around the district and the table shows the number of students receiving services at Starline and their original site so for this current school year Starline provided full day gifted services to 74 students in grades four through six out of the 74 students 10 transferred from in district and three transferred from out of district at the secondary level gifted and high achieving students access advanced coursework through honors classes in grades seven and eight and honors dual enrollment and advanced placement courses in grades 9
055through 12 the second proposed change addresses the board and Dr skinner's goal to expand gifted education services to every LHUSD campus the proposed change is to guarantee gifted services at all six elementary schools by supporting each elementary principal in developing a a sightspecific K6 gifted education scope and sequence this framework will clearly outline how identified students will receive appropriate services at their home campus this expansion requires careful consideration for several factors first additional responsibilities for site principles and program development and oversight the scope and sequence would require a plan for program design curriculum and instruction differentiation a plan to provide for the effective needs of gifted learners professional development parent and community involvement program assessment and budgeting the district will support each site in consolidating their individual gifted education plans to create a comprehensive district-wide
056scope and sequence this will ensure continuous progress and opportunities across all grades and schools and ensure that any expansion of gifted services is not just a name but in the creation of exemplary programs that expand student abilities another consideration is the professional development needs for our teachers principles and counselors to ensure effective differentiation for our advanced learners as we explore expanding gifted services across all sites um let's examine the program models that are um recommended by the Arizona Department of Education it's important to note that identifying the right model or combination of models should be determined by the specific needs of the gifted student population at each site each site needs to identify the spectrum of learning needs for the gifted students they serve and purposefully plan ways to foster challenge and expand their development
057offering a continuum of services and providing choice and programming to LHUSD families is ideal to address the vast range of gifted students learning needs some gifted students need acceleration and some or all content areas some need enrichment and some need a combination of both these models represent a multitude of tiers of service for our gifted learners the first model is our current model used in grades four through six the full day self-contained gifted classroom model provides the most comprehensive and intensive tier of service by providing academic acceleration and in-depth learning while maintaining students participation in regular school activities this grouping practice gathers students of similar potential or ability together using a national and local norming practice grouping gifted learners tends to be the least restrictive environment in which their learning can take place and the
058most effective and efficient means for schools to provide more challenging coursework thereby giving these students access to advanced content and providing them with a peer group that allows them to move at a pace that is appropriate for their abilities and allows them to reach their full potential the benefits are researchbased gifted students receive structured and consistent services from a gifted endorsed teacher who specifically designs the curriculum instruction and o- opportunities students collaborate with other gifted students and all students are strategically placed for maximum growth opportunity which guarantees they receive a full day of learning this is not a secluded setting students in this um model reap the benefits of both a homogeneous and heterogeneous grouping as they spend the majority of their day in accelerated classes that are appropriate for their abilities but they mix
059with the rest of the school population for whole school activities and non-academic subjects our LHUSD data supports the effectiveness of this model in both student um achievement and growth the next model option is the cluster grouping model which places small groups of gifted students within mixed ability classrooms in this model gifted students are grouped to address their cognitive abilities academic and effective learning needs by narrowing the ability range in each classroom teachers can more effectively differentiate instruction the cluster grouping model offers flexibility to accommodate the varying gifted populations allowing each site to customize their approach based on the number of identified students and each grade level for year from year to year it would allow LHUSD families to choose any elementary school while ensuring their gifted students receive full day gifted services in tier one
060and tier 2 instruction a consideration for successful implementation of this model is the importance of administrator counselor and teacher training and implementation of differentiated instruction for advanced learners to meet the gifted students academic and effective needs and another consideration is that the majority of our elementary schools um have only two teachers per grade level so um it would be just we'd have to be flexible to consider they couldn't implement this with fidelity because there would still be a full range of ability and achievement levels in each classroom okay the third option um that ADU recommends are our partial day models so we have two different things we have a a push in and a pull out um there's two different types of pull out models um the first one is content replacement model this is
061where students received advanced instruction in specific subject areas um in their specific area of strength um the other one is a pull out enrichment model um this was where they are able to work with their gifted peers um in an area that develops exploration of a specific content um that maybe is a specialty at that site um in the pushin model um they would work with a gifted specialist who um would either individually or in small group go into the regular classroom during specific academic times while these models offer valuable opportunities for enrichment and acceleration there are important considerations um these models require additional staffing so for example it might be a counselor an interventionist special education teacher a general education teacher that is providing these services in addition to their regular duties and if
062its use of a standalone service partial day models may not fully satisfy the ARS requirement to provide an educational program that is an integral part of the regular school day and works best when it's in parallel with a full day model the key challenge is ensuring appropriate support and differentiation for gifted learners designed around their individual ability profiles throughout the entire school day not just during this specialized instructional time okay last slide I promise the final slide um provides our projected 2526 gifted population numbers by grade level and site dr skinner has had the opportunity to review the model and um the numbers and um she would like to propose the introduction of a gifted pullout teacher to support gifted services for the 2526 school year this teacher could assist in creating the scope and
063sequence and provide services one day a week to the elementary schools until more teachers receive professional development or obtain their endorsement so for example LHUSD currently has five elementary schools who do not provide gifted services and with five days um in a school week each campus would have access to a gifted teacher one day a week and then um she can speak more to that as well um but that concludes my presentation thank you thank you so thank you so much Mrs tman so before I open up to uh board discussion I just want to make a clarification um during this process there has been some confusion to the community that this board wants to change the current gifted program at Starline Elementary and that is a false narrative we have no interest in doing
064away with the current program matter of fact we want to support that program um to the best of our ability it's an amazing program it works um the reason for this proposal is because we do have students at other elementary schools and some of those parents I I've talked to some of those parents I know you have um some of the principles have shared with us that these are students that for various reasons are not able to attend Starline they whether it be a transportation issue family issue whatever that is and we have an obligation as a district to take care of all kids we have an obligation to make sure that we are supporting services for every student in this district and the Starline model will still exist and we want to make sure
065as a board that it is communicated to our gifted families across the district that that is an option for them um closing that program is not is not even a forethought for this board um or the superintendent um but expanding to all campuses to make sure that we're leaving no gifted student behind and I do know that we have students right now at all elementary schools that are not able to attend Starline and we have to make sure that we are able to provide services for them as well and um some of the discussion and conversation with with leaders because we care about how this community feels and to those of you who showed up tonight to speak to the call to the public thank you your your opinion and your feedback matters and to
066the kids can we give the children a hand of applause so I want to assure you to the students in the room your program is not going anywhere and um we are thankful to hear from you tonight and it takes a lot of guts to get up in a meeting in a room full of adults and talk and so we are very proud of you for doing that um but back to the discussion at hand it is important that we uh make sure that we are providing the best educational opportunities for all students and um we know that there's some things that we have to work through to make that happen and uh but I do support this open up for discussion yeah absolutely i mean this goes along that tutoring increasing access to different
067educational or systems um question what is cost of getting a district teacher to get that gifted endorsement so I'm gonna turn that one over to Lindsay putting her on the spot um Mrs and and I do have maybe Jamie too i'm sorry i don't have a cost analysis on an endorsement so there's several different ways to get your endorsement depending on route you take i know a couple community colleges offer the endorsement so I believe it's roughly like $2,000 okay thank you and might be worth a conversation with MCC or um whoever comes in later about getting that certification option there um yeah I think the push in I like that idea you know looking at the numbers of some of the other schools one in Havupai one Jamaica three you know not huge numbers
068that could demand a single individual all the time right but at least opening it up to getting the access um pushing all I like that um and obviously keeping current system as it is getting as many kids to be able to access that as possible so definitely support this and looking forward to seeing that come up with and we're able to open it up to you know multiple grade levels where you know I know we're really wanting to ensure you know we talked about the tutoring and intervention but on the other side really ensuring that enrichment process because if we want to be number one in the state we need to really make sure we're accessing and making sure that we're identifying all students so if we can identify those students in kindergarten numbers will
069be larger we will be able to serve more and make sure that they are receiving you know extended services in Richmond as gifted services at a much younger age and then we have more than a 4% that numbers will increase and and something I do I want to add two things is in offering to young to our lower grade levels I want to ensure that we will also be doing that at Starline Elementary um for that program and I I do think um because what is happening at Starline is great that we monitor um the progress of is this decision decision negatively affecting um the Starline program and uh so I think that we we monitor that um just to ensure that we are continuing to support the the full day program and u for
070the full day program do they need to be highly gifted in all three areas so say I'm only gifted in one and I'm say slightly deficient in the others you're in that program are you then dragging behind in other areas okay not proficient but not gifted in one area i'm still supported by the gifted teacher okay yes um if it's $2,000 for the gifted endorsement that might be something that our board considers picking up the tab for it if we have a teacher who's interested having some sort of application process and um maybe sponsoring teachers who want to go for that endorsement um if you don't already do that um do we cover do we cover that cost currently no we do not so thank you i knew somebody in the room would have the
071answer now everybody's gonna want to get I heard her clearly say we haven't had enough committees this this week so we need more committees um for the scope and sequence that we're asking our all of our elementary principles to have if we had one um teacher with their gifted endorsement that travels around to each of the five school sites would that teacher be able to help develop the scope and sequence to lessen the burden on each principal or and I guess what I'm asking is can the same scope and sequence be used at each school site or does each elementary have to develop one that's specific to their school so every five years we're required to submit ours to AD so that's the the district level one that you would approve before it goes to
072AD um the reason why I have up there that each site should then come up with their own scope and sequence before we put it into a district one is as you've seen the numbers are very different at each site the needs are very different at each site the staffing so we were um supporting them and figuring out what program um meets your vision your goals how you want to support your gifted students and that's why it's like we right now we're providing some enrichment services but if we're going to change that enrichment name to gifted services we need to have a scope in sequence that matches the AD requirement but yes um if we do hire someone to go around and support and do their push they can absolutely help because that was one
073of the considerations is the lift for principles to do it so just to kind of clarify on Lisa's question that would be um something that we would want to ask that GT teacher that's potentially hired um to support and help to write that scope of sequence so that the principles you know aren't doing it you know in in a silo standalone so yes so between Jamie the GT you know push in pull out person we would want to make sure they have that support creating it and that makes like one kid have a suit by one day a week they get pulled out and they get a day of specialized teaching they put back in their class so that does make sense to have the principal with the you know the the teacher be able
074to create a program that fits the site You know the other concern I have is um I have heard of a specific program that's really loved by one of our principles it's called Oceans and um I don't pretend ocean I think yes okay i don't pretend to be cons conversant on that particular program but um I did want to ask if if we implement a gifted program at each of the school sites for one day a week would principles be able to retain some of those programs that they're already using and liking and having success with or would we be asking everyone to kind of start from scratch and use a district platform instead yeah no no no yeah um so when we think about um so the ocean program is specific to Nautilus and
075I believe that's the name that they gave it it's not like a program like that they're getting a curriculum from it's the program that they use um uh so when we think about that enrichment program and thinking about that we can apply um those services to our gifted students but also other it's open to other students as well so it's still considered enrichment but when we call it gifted services it has to be for that student's ability profile it can't be just a CAN program that we're going to just give all these students it's very specific to their strengths because when we think about um gifted students um it's potential so unless they're given those experiences and those opportunities and that very specific curriculum and differentiation they might not reach reach their potential okay thank
076you especially if we're giving the principal be able to I guess if what you're saying is specifically program I don't see to remove any of the other tools not at all so I would support keeping keeping things that the principal view is valuable and this yeah absolutely okay any other f further discussion all right at this time item 5.4 budget and audit findings um the governing board approved a budget review in January 2025 james Brisco of Brisco Consulting Group this evening will present the budget audit findings um And we are bringing him All right good evening Mr brisco can you hear me mr brisco are you able to hear me apparently not oh he is connected you got a lot of technology mr brisco can you hear us all right we can come back to
077him uh we do have another presentation if you want to communicate with him and uh while we have our other presentation at this time we'll come back to item uh 5.4 item 5.5 child watch overwatch presentation um I've invited them to be here this evening uh child overwatch is going to be presenting a product to design enhanced student safety i had the great opportunity in um being in a presentation that they did to some community elected officials um between the school district and the city um and they have proposed using our district as a test model uh for their program and as we look at school safety and enhancing our school safety around all of our campuses uh this is an item that we definitely would like to take a look at thank you Mr
078president board my name is Justin i am with child overwatch we are an advanced technology security company uh with the rising threat that we all can see to our children that is happening around us we have created a software program that we'd like to show to you today um the approval for a pilot program would be the first in the nation for something like this to ever take place so there will be a lot of questions we're going to afterwards for anybody that has any questions want to see a live feed go through um I brought with me today Stephen Alzando who is the owner CEO and Jason Peters who is our research and developer who will be uh giving a demo so thank you so I think it's important to say what do we
079do right we are using AI facial recognition to identify anybody who's ever been convicted of a sex offense and is on the registries on the national registry um this isn't something you know we don't usually go into about ourselves but in AI there's a lot of concern right now one is you have a very uneducated mass what is artificial intelligence um and we're making it worse as technologists because we are empowering people who aren't technologists to create technology um and that is a huge threat we've all heard it hey I built my website you know with tech GP in five minutes um I won't go into the problems with that but what I will say is that I am not that person i have been involved in artificial intelligence and machine learning since uh approximately
0802001 um I was speaking about security and advanced security around artificial intelligence for the government and for public envies uh in 2019 which was a year and a half before chat GPT was released for even a beta so we do have experience we've taken that and we've built a system that isn't just looking hey it's using AI and it's trying to identify these people um I also did eight years as a United States Marine and so we do not capture or store we do not sell we do not take your data in any way we do not take the videos that are captured by the people who run our system so when our system is ran a proprietary algorithm is run on your computer in your environment it sends proprietary data back to us it
081gets analyzed and that's how we perform the matches on the faces we do not take the video nor do we take the images from your system unless a match is made so with all that being said on what we do uh we'll talk about the threat currently within the United States there's almost 800,000 people just on the registries and these are convicted sex offenders next slide please uh why would we care about that why would we say "Hey this is how we're going to protect kids." Um because statistically we know this is a huge threat uh within um what's it within three years 5.3% of all convicted sex offenders will commit another sexual offense not just another crime another offense uh within 10 years it's 20% and within uh 15 years it's 24% or one
082in four people will commit another sex crime after being released um you know I I don't want to comment on the laws or anything i'm not a lawyer i'm not a public official i'm a geek behind a computer but I'm also a father um I have kids i'm lucky enough two have already got through high school i got one going as a freshman next year i want them protected that's why we came up with this this isn't something where we spent all our time and energy thinking we're going to make a million dollars you know off of AI um I actually spent a year now trying to make this affordable for people so it's a definitely something that's a passion project but it's something that's very effective next slide so so how do our solutions
083work we have really have three core fundamental solutions one is an easily deployed solution for small business you have a small dance studio you have a small karate studio who's coming in there we know that these people are going there and taking pictures because we've seen it in the news we've done the research in our own hometown of Tmacula California we had one two months ago convicted sex offender found at a school event where they were doing dance competition um it's horrible so we have three different solutions one is our USB camera we call it monitor it can be deployed in any small location where you know you have concerns people are coming in uh You can also adapt that system to work in larger environments so if you were hosting a cheer competition somewhere
084and you don't have access to the internet we can actually adapt that solution to run facial recognition without the internet it's a little bit different for the school board though what we've we're trying to get in for a pilot is our overlay solution uh one of the big things we recognized was small businesses uh school boards you know school systems you already have cameras you don't want to invest in another camera yet another thing to take care of um I worked in IT security for 20 years did big big audits for all these people if you have one more extra thing that's just one more thing that's going to get broken stolen or lost right so what we've done is I wrote a piece of software that actually works with your existing cameras uh without
085the need to integrate i don't have to license to them um I'm not beholden to what they do if you have a web interface on your camera we can monitor and use facial recognition same security that we've already put in place in all our other solutions it's your software it gets installed on your system and nothing comes off of it except proprietary data that in no way can be linked back to anyone it's just measurements of your face we don't measure body we don't take hair color we only look at facial analysis um and because we don't keep the video we don't keep the pictures unless there's a violation um our security uh of our data is pretty rock solid but on top of we just don't have the data to be stolen why do
086you rob banks that's where the money is right why do people break into Visa why do people break that's where the credit card we recognize right away we are a data company right we're we're taking data and we're comparing it and the first thing I did was I got rid of as much as I could so we do not keep your data i can't stress that one enough um and then we have custom facial cataloges and systems where for cities say they have a sensitive area we don't care who's going necessarily we just want to make sure that the wrong people aren't going there so anybody who's not an employee so we do negative lookups etc so yeah great picture obviously I am the nerd in the company right i have my costume on and
087everything so what what's happening here though like what how does facial recognition actually occur um it's not what a lot of people think we take or the way we work is I take a,024 measurements of a face you can see it kind of there through the web the blue lines uh if you've ever watched a show where they do facial reconstruction they pick out all those special points on a face those are all known points and we use those the same way except instead of like recreation from cadaavver where they use depth markers i use the measurements in between each of those and the measurements of the angles created by all those lines using that in,024 I can get very accurate results right it's never 100% nothing's ever 100% in technology anybody tells you that
088is a liar um but this is as accurate as you can get and because we believe in our country because we believe in the constitution we have gone with the with the idea of it's better that you know 100 guilty men go free and one innocent man goes to jail so the parameters on our ability to match um I'm currently calculating the seven decimal points so we are really making sure that we when we alert you this is the person that we save next slide please um couple things I already talked about so how our system works we do take 124 measurements of the face um it takes less than one second to compare that against 60,000 records right now and then we're able to SMS or web alerts uh we're currently looking this is
089very nerdy but under 500 milliseconds for a return against 60,000 records um and that's from visual capture to SMS alert ignologist so you should take it with a grain of salt things will impact it but for the most part that's what we've seen in testing in California and Arizona next slide please yes ma'am when you say they're sent for comparison where are they sent to that's a great question so what we do is we have uh cloud servers right now within the United States um I am a cloud architect if anybody cares but we made sure they were in the United States so we don't fall outside of US laws um other countries can do what they want with our data but I am 100% positive that a AWS Amazon Web Services who we use
090in the cloud they follow the law within the US as long as we keep it within uh US servers and we've done that so where does it go physically it stays within the United States and then who has access to it uh I'm the only person in the world that has access so um not not really steve knows if I die he gets an email that says "Here's the password to all the data." So um but we've you know this is not something that I'm letting just anybody come in and access this is something that's very sensitive and and we've made sure that it is in compliant environments um as far as specific locations it never land your data never lands anywhere and is never stored uh anywhere physical that we have control over it's
091just all in the cloud unless something does that answer your question it does answer my question okay how many of you guys have gone on the the registry and looked up for pedophiles or sexual offenders why did you go on there why did you go on there the bottom line is that registry is only used right now pretty much to identify homes that you are purchasing or living in right there is no other form of identifying these creeps pretty much except child overwatch and we've created that system so I just want everybody to understand what we're doing here and I'm gonna go ahead and bring Jason back no no no this this is perfect actually um in addition right like I said uh I was a Marine Steve was in the Navy Justin is a
092longtime member of this community uh that people might know we're giving back too so this isn't just we're trying to make a buck off of creeps um all of our data will actually be ran through and obviously we will analyze for people on registry in addition a secondary analysis occurs within our systems to look for anybody on the national what is it national exploited missing and exploited children's database um those responses are controlled by us if we get an alert it goes to us we facilitate contact with law enforcement there's been too many bad outcomes of people trying to do the right thing so I did the research and I said this is probably the best if we will contact law enforcement say hey there's a possible match share the data that we have please
093pursue this accordingly uh obviously we will work with our client hey this has occurred and a school system or a public entity will be fully briefed so so this won't be just scanning the adults who come into our schools it will be scanning the children as well that's a great question so currently the way the solution is set up by default you opt into this is it's non-age discriminate um but if we have an organization they say hey we're really sensitive we don't want any of our kids faces analyzed um I can do that now age is obviously you know it's not something that we can absolutely measure sometimes it thinks I'm 39 sometimes it's closer to my real age um but we will set it hey if it appears that this person is a
094minor we can filter that out so we won't the measurements themselves will never be even yes sir does that answer your question it does but so our high school is a mix of children and adults as students i mean some of our students are 18 so okay right but but then I I do believe that it creates a duty for our board to make sure that our parents know that if they're sending their kids to one of our schools their kids are going to be scanned with technology that they might not be comfortable with just how it works a little bit here um so in essence you have a server which has all these photos of predators now question on that uh where do you get your photos we get it directly from the registry
095okay directly from the registry how quickly do you update the after the conviction so as soon as it hits the registry you automatically taken it how quickly is your refresh rate yeah that's a great question there's a couple factors that go into it so I can talk about our process and then talk about the kind of the hindrances to our process right so our process is that we monitor and anytime there's a delta or a change uh we identify it and then we true up so if like California doesn't make a notice right so research the California if I notice that hey a name is missing or a new name has been added then we true up the database um Arizona right now we're you know it looks like it's by jurisdiction they're managing the
096individual registries it's sheriff's office yeah and then states like Texas I actually get an email anytime there's a change so as soon as they email me hey and they give me a list these are the people who came off these are the people went on um so our process is as soon as there's a change we want to make the update the hindrances are that each municipality each area within the country um and it's not just the states right because we have all of the uh Native American um and then we have the US territories and so there's actually over 200 registries just for the United States what's cool about our system is right now we have Arizona and California right eventually if a pedophile from New York comes over to Arizona to your town
097you will get an alert from that um as we progress in our process and and and get with the states that actually download their their data we'll get better and better right right now we can do Arizona and California eventually we'll have all 50 states if that makes sense that makes it better yeah so how the system works you have all these photos in a database right you have a camera that is pinging data points in essence a face is a data point that sends it to your system and unless there's a ping match nothing happens with it that data just gets passed through yeah so essentially what happens is um without getting without getting into like the proprietary aspect of how I made it cheaper um when we analyze the face we are only
098sending we don't send back like an image or video like other people do we send back the measurements along with just a couple key pieces of information um none of which is able to be tied back to a location if that makes sense and then the call goes back um to one cloud service provider for the match and then we use different providers when we have more data okay so if it's like the kid issue you know our our students it doesn't hold on to their image or hold on to their measurements in any way no sir okay i I will have no I have no idea who you are if you're not and it doesn't store that measurement anywhere it just if it doesn't match it's gone if it doesn't match it's gone now
099how about deployment to large spaces so say basketball games football games track meets uh things like that nature is it you know set up a camera it's going to track everybody within the state and hit the data points or is it a checkpoint scan yeah that's a great question um some will work a little bit differently it depend there's a lot of variables in that but I'll give you kind of the easy version is our base system that just runs off a USB cam can do 100 faces at once okay um if your camera is better than our HP USB cam so I saw the cameras in here these are definitely higher quality um you'll be able to do much more so and then if you have more cameras you can segment a room and
100there's a lot of variables but for the most part we can faces off any US okay um I I have a question regards to who is contacted for example if if we move forward with with the pilot of this um we want to be cautious obviously as a board who the point of contact is and you brought up a very good point for example let's say our um AA at one of our elementary schools is the person that gets the call and that person could respond not in such a good you know get off the campus and we want to be careful who's handling it can we determine um with you who the the first initiation of contact is with yeah because of the sensitivity of of this software um you know for 20 years
101I just did credit card security and encryption nobody cares about that right i want to protect my But we really see how well people protect their credit card privacy right is a totally different animal and it's something that we do take very seriously so we've taken a lot of measures to ensure that uh we have that privacy in place and one of those is when we do a deployment um whether we're doing it at the restaurant or we're doing it here with the school district is I am personally going to come out here and work with you to understand who do you want notified how fast do you want notified how do you want them notified um the software is very uh very modular so we could be flexible to you if you choose to
102use ultimate control security team's got an iPad you know they're scanning the room they get a notification hey we just had someone walk into the gymnasium that's triggered our alert hey guys let's have a conversation yeah absolutely and then uh additionally I've done a lot of architecture on the granularity of rights so just because somebody is in the school district and they have an to be able to log in and work with it they're only going to be able to see a subset of things on their account yeah like alerts not the feed correct correct um and then you said to the seventh dec on that um but what's false positives yeah is there false what's the rate there are false positives i mean it's a it's something that people will try the other uh
103snake oil salesman will try to tell you oh no it's perfect look I mean you don't have to be an engineer to figure out that if my son looks like me am I my and take two pictures right is that me 20 years ago no well longer than that now but 30 years ago or is that him today right and so you have the father-son paradox um you have twins uh natural doppelgs so there is a possibility but um the average match uh any math teachers in here we're going to get really nerdy everybody else skip math when they go sign cosine right and got excited um we use sign cosine match,24 and it's not um I always have to correct people it's not a percentage we look at distance and so if zero is
104I don't know what this is negative one is the total opposite and positive one is a match um I'm currently skewing to 0.881627 so uh it has to be it's not a 88% match it's that the skew between all those all those 124 measurements is so close to perfect that it's it's right there the bottom line is our system is an awareness system uh alerts you allows you to see a visual of the the the person and then you take it how you want to at that point it's an awareness program to alert you of of potential predators at your school or at your facilities so I am actually a prosecutor in the county um and something so in Arizona registered sex offenders for life so they they might have it terminated in say Washington
105they're no longer on that registry but if they come here they're required to register within 72 hours um are we able to capture those people so they say they haven't come in here and registered here they're coming from say Washington a state who's more liberal and will eventually eventually as long as the Washington registry is up to date registry is up to date so in essence would be a small holder if their registry has removed that predator but they're required to register here that would be a gap that is a gap yeah 100% and one that we tried to look at and just so you know any a partner of ours is is legal and if you have any questions legally we'll we'll send this with the sheriff's office to help actually we met with
106the sheriff uh and the chief of police chief chief i'm sorry i talked to Sheriff Shster but but yeah we if you have any legal questions we can handle that through our council ourselves yeah this is a fantastic product and I I definitely would be interested in a pilot you know well you guys will be the first ones to to run in the nation and we chose you guys because you know Justin and we wanted to start it off in Arizona versus California where we're from because you you guys entertain us yes so I guess currently are you pulling from the registers of all states or just the states that are right now right now we have complete California Arizona but different states the way they handle it and then you know third party and
107that third party trying to get their data and they have made it really hard we're deal with each state and public record request and trying to turn out there's questions but it's public information from the registry I mean I literally and it's going to take uh people to to make awareness that we need this information to protect our kids so it's going to take time but once we deploy this it it should get out the word gets out and then we can actually start extracting that data and making it uh you know well and I just one of your strengths of the system I point out a weakness one of the strengths is by measurement measurement of the face you you know earards or or facial you know tattoo removals it's not based off the
108picture it's based off the measurements which are very difficult to change it's not right and again it's all the data that I get from the different states how seriously And the bottom line is we are gonna be back here showing a presentation if you guys want to actually see it working at the end i know I don't want to take all your time because I got it you know I was we were told 10 minutes and I think we're close to the time already if you could stay for a couple questions so I'm piloting this program are you looking to pilot at one school or all campuses all if we can yeah i mean there's a couple different ways you can handle it but one of the ways I like doing you know software deployments
109in larger environments is approach and move out so that everybody can see but I like moving a little bit like that so we can imped having should be the first one we'd love to deploy it in as many schools your your swim uh facility over there the aquatic center i mean these guys are are looking for kids swimming you know target environment they're targeting that so if you guys can help us out we'll deploy them run our pilot program with those and and and and we'll catch some creeps i think what I would like what I would like to do um and and we'll open up for discussion from the board is I think it'd be important for you to meet um in a meeting with all of our principles absolutely um that way they
110can ask the questions that they have that affects their campus and you can have more time to give them more information of of how this can be a great tool for their campuses and then I would also say where obviously costs would need to be discussed what it would cost the district to do this but also I'd like to get with legal on the issue Lisa brought up of just making you have a a very tight um process for notification and you know opt in opt out type stuff yeah cost is definitely I mean that was our biggest thing when I started first doing research on hey we're going to build facial recognition um the commercially available solutions out there right now that I could have used and made it cheap about $5,000 and we're
111currently doing Wow there you go okay i do have one more okay so when you say you're piloting at this would be your first public school system um have you um do you have this program at any private schools or any like retail centers or what is your previous experience we ran off inside California system running in the wild and unfortunately I mean we're selling against the world you know and unfortunately there's no motivation in our own state to do it well they just denied a bill to make it automatically sex from a 16 to 17 year old so I understand the push back but Government wise you guys are the first yeah if you have private facilities I mean we got one going in in Parker next week so I understand yeah so uh
112awesome but governmentwise you guys are the first and you guys are going to be known that you you once we get out there fantastic okay well yeah we'll definitely definitely interested i'd like to uh circle back with you and uh any any other further questions from the board all right thank you so much all right um back to 5.4 um if we're able to log him on if not then we will move move on okay um while they log in we can move to 5.6 governing board Daytona property um the governing board is going to discuss and hear from the public regarding options for the district property that formally was occupied by ASU um so we had asked member Raman specifically had that for one more time um that we open up to the public
113um in this evening's meeting to hear from you of potential um opportunities that you would like to see at that campus um I can tell you that there are potential partners that have approached um the governing board and the city um at this time we're not able to discuss who those are um to respect their privacy um but before we move forward in those conversations um the board feels it's important to hear from you the stakeholders of our community so at this time we will open it up for discussion if there's anyone that would like to to speak please come to the mic state your name you have one minute first Anyone else okay if no one else I will open it up for board discussion so just going forward I think um if people
114still have ideas that they want to submit but they weren't maybe prep here or prepared to speak um you can always submit those please if you do submit them it'd be helpful submit them to the entire board so that we all have the same pieces of information to work from um we did Can I disclose the amount that the Yes absolutely yes yes we did have an appraisal done on the property and I will let you It was 11 million but I don't I don't have the exact figure do you have the exact figure yeah yeah like 11.7 million that that property is worth so it is a high dollar asset i mean we already knew that but it is a high dollar asset we want to make sure that we do the correct thing
115with that campus the one that's going to be the most beneficial i mean we are a school district and so our number one priority is or should be um student success and we want to choose an option that best sets up our students for success absolutely absolutely yeah all right i got Thank you all right at this time we'll go back to item 5.4 budget audit findings mr brisco good evening can you hear us Mr brisco mr mr oh could you unmute him are you able to ask i'll just try the other one yeah but he's not he's clearly not here to us so our lights are down thank you someone that can help us he was talking we didn't hear him can you hear us now we're getting microphone input signal audio so we
116are picking up or we can move it to Yeah this is going to be a recount definitely so what we'll do if we can't get him on we'll move it to the next governing board meeting all right moving on uh item action items item 6.1 human resources changes to substitute pay mrs berman here do you want to Okay thank you uh Mr president members of the board before you tonight we have a recommendation regarding substitute compensation um a little history each year the classified substitute wage has increased in accordance with Arizona state minimum wage requirements to ensure we are offering a competitive rate that is commensurate with the increases to the classified substitute wage we're also requesting to increase the pay scale for certified substitutes to prevent compression in pay scales and to continue to
117attract substitutes certified substitute rates were last updated July 1 2023 and in that same time frame classified wages have increased from $13.85 per hour to $14.70 per hour before you tonight you can see the current pay structure that exists and our proposed changes would include increasing the certified pay from 130 to $140 per day for days 1 through 15 that's considered a short-term assignment and for our certified teachers who are in a position for 16 days or longer or they are filling a vacancy we would propose that they would earn $175 per day the classified rate um we do have a little restructure here just for your consideration um we proposed that we would keep that uh aligned with Arizona state minimum wage for short-term assignment 1 to 15 days um but on occasion our
118uh support staff such as a personal care assistant a special education parapro they do require long-term leave as well and for continuity of services for those um students we would like to offer um a long-term rate which would be a 75 cent per hour increase for days 16 or longer or if we're unable to hire for one of those critical areas we would like to recognize that by giving them that little bit of a pay increase all right thank you at this time um any discussion from the board members before a vote seems a reasonable pay increase especially uh as the rates have gone up thank you for the proposal and so much of our the success of our students and their day-to-day school experience does rely on us having um a good pool of
119substitutes and it has been kind of hard to keep that substitute pool up so anything that we can do encourage people to do this i'm in favor of it absolutely all right at this time call for a vote i move to approve action item 6.1 as is and I will second yes yes yes all right item 6.2 special education teach town curriculum about curriculum um to properly provide an Arizona standardsbased curriculum for students with significant intellectual disabilities a curriculum that meets their specific needs must be adopted and procured teachtown's curriculum is an adapted comprehensive core curriculum with hands-on interactive lessons and independent technology delivered lessons for students with moderate to severe disabilities it provides instruction on adaptive and functional skills with for students to learn independence jigsaw Learning LLC DBA Teach Town would be procured
120as a sole source as it is unique in its approach to curriculum and it is specifically designed for students with severe cognitive delays teachtown uses a variety of modalities to meet the needs of each student while ensuring the student is still exposed to grade level state standards in addition Teachtown also provides ongoing professional development to support the implementation of the curriculum and use of the curriculum to monitor IEP goal progress this approval will be for a pilot of the program for the 2526 school year to be used in the developmental preschool self-contained classes at Jamaica and Thunderbolt the quote is part of the TIPS contract um for academic and educational goods will be paid from from funds from the idea grant in an amount not to exceed $110,000 all right thank you um at this
121time uh I will open up for discussion i do have a question um and maybe me member Raman or superintendent can answer this um does this fall under the same rules of making this curriculum available to the community before adopted for review since it's a pilot it doesn't okay if we were to fully move to adoption then we would do the 60-day review is my understanding let me just check if we want that is a very good question and I don't know the answer to it something with teach in my past experience I have used this curriculum and piloted it in my previous district um as a pilot we did not release it for the 60 days correct I know source we do not have to approval to use it correct so I know soul
122source says correct we you know we don't have to do that so this is uh I'm sorry supplemental uh let me correct myself um so this is a supplemental for the students this is a core as our so our students with intellectual disabilities and severe cognitive disabilities in our programs at Jamaica at the preschool and at Thunderbolt those teachers have no curriculum to use for these students there is not really a curriculum out there like this we have tried to use STAR as a district star is specifically for students with autism and does not offer all of the various components um so this is to give teachers something because they have nothing right now and are peacemealing so and this will be implemented in the next in July correct in July so we'll if we
123take a moment to get this just make sure we got our red legal um and bring it back on the next and approved because you know that's we absolutely need a good curriculum for that i think it's one in 34 um students now have some intellectual disability uh so it is pervasive and so having a curriculum that supports and benefits them I think is an absolute uh requirement so thank you for bringing this for us i love that it's being paid through grants um that's exactly what we want so I think it looks very promising just looking at it briefly it's it looks like it's K2 basically all the way through high school they do have a high school program our high school teachers really have a great thing going okay um so it's an
124option to consider eventually but right now they have something that is working phenomenally so our other teachers don't so in this package I see Encore K through 12 yes would we be implementing some of this at the high school no it's just that's the licensing is the K12 it's a K12 license for it but not well it's a license per student okay so yes so if we move this to my question for you because I think this is amazing so please don't think I'm in opposition of this we need this we have to strengthen special ed in this community and this is one of those proponents to make that happen i just want to make sure that as a board that we are in line with policy to make when it comes to curriculum and
125with law um but my question was if we push this off to next month's meeting will that put you in a bad position we will not have to school what's the drop dead so if we didn't exist special I just need to check we just need to check with the attorney what do we got to do he's available if we want to call him oh yeah yeah i'm probably calling check real quick he our our council is available we want to if we want to go into executive session call we can just reach him okay i'll go call him i'll step out real quick thank you sorry no I was just one bit out of school 10:00 that used to be pretty standard actually like Oh man yeah i got too much yeah yeah good
126question yes that's right that way if it's a problem I'm glad you said that that's what I'm telling you okay so we've spoke with council and um so council was unsure so we called superintendent horn and our state superintendent has along with council has informed us that we are good to move forward with adoption um so at this time um I need a motion from our board i'll move to approve 6.2 i second i did want to say one thing so we already talked about how this is funded by the idea grant i know we're hearing a lot like and especially in national news about um defunding certain things and and grants being um put in jeopardy and I just want to stress that this is one way that our district really relies on federal
127grants to provide education for our kids and just um that grant is still here but it there has been significant cuts to that grant for next school year so we talk to needs that okay all right we're ready for roll call for the vote oh do we have a second i second thank you yes yes thank you yeah yeah so all right 6.3 school meal prices um Mr staff are you presenting this yes thank you first I want before you speak I want to commend you and your team and Tar for um as you know we were the first school district in the nation to ban um chemicals and food dyes in our school lunches and um whenever we begin this conversation you were a critical part of this and a huge help to myself
128to even to the state a lot of your input really helped define the state bill and I'm not sure if you're aware of that but it did and so you your input has not just helped for what is happening in this district or with the state bill for the state of Arizona but also what will be begin to happen around the nation so thank you for your hard work your dedication to this district and to our kids and we owe you a huge thank you and a hand thank you um and actually to kind of segue on that um I was in Phoenix last week meeting with legislators because like everyone else we're getting budget cuts too um and Mr basuchi reached out to me and to Chef Chris and wants us to be part
129of a round table in Phoenix on the 30th yes I'll be there so yeah great awesome okay uh Mr president members of the board USDA requires that there is equity in school equity in school lunch pricing a provision that requires school districts to charge students for paid meals at a price that is on average equal to the difference between free meal reimbursement $4.35 plus we get another 9 um for our menus and the amount of paid re paid meal reimbursement which is So that's $3.85 schools that currently charge less for meal prices than the amount needed to create paid lunch equity are required to gradually increase prices over time until they meet the requirement or supplement their food service operating funds with nonfederal funds to ensure equity um and this is a historical data of
130what where we've been the last few years so we're asking for an increase of 10 cents at breakfast um and 10 cents at lunch um a little bit of perspective Kingman's breakfast is a dollar their lunch is 350 but they only have two sites that charge all 11 of their other sites are community eligibility provisions so they're all free mojave Valley charges $2.25 for breakfast $4 for lunch colorado Union $1.75 for breakfast and 350 for lunch okay thank you thank you i'll now open up for discussion before a vote things are somewhat limited it's a USDA requirement so 10 cents is nominal i I'm ready for a vote okay um and the only thing I would say is um I would like to encourage people um even if you're not sure if you qualify for
131title one to fill out that form at the beginning of the year because a lot of people are surprised they do qualify it is all confidential we do not you know and your kid doesn't go into a special line or anything like that it's just Yeah yeah so please if this would help your family spread the word that that you know we do have free and reduced lunches available and a lot of people qualify who don't think that they would so I know I was just going to move to approve okay move to approve 6.3 second yes yes yes item 6.4 business services resolution fiscal year 2425 revised resolution 2425-02.2 2425-03.2 242506.2 242507.2 and 2425 08.2 and 2024 25-10.2 are necessary due to staffing changes in order to continue current practice for the remainder of
132the 2425 physical year the resolutions are submitted are maintenance resolutions it would not affect any substantial change in our current operation procedures i call for a vote i'll approve or I'll move to approve 6.4 i second and this is just updating who's allowed to sign forms yes yes yes all right at this time item 6.5 Superintendent Skinner with the Kim math manipulatives and supplementary math activities engaged so sorry not used to that one um be provided with professional development um led by Kim Sutton at the end of July focused on supporting students math achievement through the use of engaging math games and manipulatives to ensure effective learning in the professional development session is best practice to provide teachers with the necessary activities and materials uh during the session so that when they leave the PD
133uh they have everything needed to be able to implement strategies any of the games fun things interactive things that they see in the sessions they'll have it u readily available so the district um we're asking in to purchase the attached books and hand uh hands-on materials designed to help teachers in enhanced math instruction by engaging students through hands-on activities math games and manipulatives so double dice triple dice double deckahedrian dice place value dice and then the the game activity books this is not replacing any core curriculum this will be supplemental so that we can engage students with more um higher level thinking and hands-on manipulatives and games yeah open for discussion at this time um just so we see the retail price of materials is $35,177 the district received 40% off and free shipping bringing
134the total uh to $21,17 um at this time the district will request an NTE amount of $23,000 i open for discussion to the board i was personally a kid that hated just straight lectures in high school and and these type of things were always something that I personally found got me more engaged doing problems doing stuff that was creative with my mind rather than just sitting there drawing through problems getting so this is something I find highly valuable especially in the realm of math um being able math is really about thinking through problems logic and getting games and things that actually draw someone to want to engage with that process is incredibly valuable so I definitely support this um I'm excited because 75% of what this board is is really our job is to support
135education in this district 75% of everything that's on our agenda should be about supporting teaching supporting the success of our students and how that is happening and so I'm a big proponent of investing into professional development for this district for our teachers and making learning greater um and seeing what we can do and uh so thank you great i'm sorry at this time if there's no other discussion it's all Yeah it'll be prek through 8th grade and then we will have our special ed and intervent you know any remedial at high school will be provided some materials but prek through 8th grade will receive the bulk of the materials and yes and high school remedial that need some additional support state will be involved as well but yeah prek mostly all right any further discussion
136from the board all right call for a vote at this time I want a motion to approve item 6.6 6.5 sorry um as is yes yes item 6.6 the governing board will present the recommendation for the director of special education um this is um a position that has um been available in previous years in the district and um as Dr stone um and Dr skinner together have evaluated the structure of specifically with special education um they felt and the board feels that we need to really hone in on improving special ed in this community in our schools and it makes it really difficult whenever that department falls under the department that has so many other responsibilities and so we really needed an individual to take this and run with it and improve this and um
137so tonight I'm honored to read this recommendation we are pleased to recommend Mrs alli Newman for the position of director of special education for the Lake Hatu Unified School District mrs miss Noodleman currently serves as the special ed coord special education coordinator for our district bringing with her seven years of educational experience and a lifelong passion for supporting students with disabilities her dedication to special education began early volunteering as a peer tutor in middle school a commitment that has guided her career ever since she earned a bachelor of science and chemistry with a premed emphasis from the College of Idaho in 2015 before transitioning to education in 2017 her teaching career began as a chemistry teacher at her alma mater where she supported students in inclusive classroom settings recognizing her calling in special education Mrs
138noodleman went on to complete her master's of education and secondary education from Grand Canyon University followed by additional graduate degrees in special education and educational leadership in 2019 she relocated to Arizona to care for family and accepted a position at Kingman High School as a resource science teacher there she rose through the ranks serving as a department chair and then as assistant principal overseeing special education services for more than 200 students 10 teachers and 20 pared educators in this leadership capacity Mrs noodleman gained deep experience in compliance with IDEIDA and section 504 as well as in collaborating with staff and community partners to provide high quality indiv individualized support since joining the Lake Avisu Unified School District in January as a special education coordinator Mrs noodleman has continued to demonstrate a strong commitment to improving
139services and outcomes for students with special needs her leadership has already had a meaningful impact on our district beyond her administrative responsibilities Mrs nudelman is committed to professional growth and sharing her expertise she has presented at both the Arizona IDA conference and the ESSA conference and is scheduled to present at the National Forum for the Rural Education Association this fall outside of work she enjoys spending time with her husband and their one-year-old daughter mrs noodleman's comprehensive background hands-on classroom experience and demonstrated leadership in special education uniquely positioned for her for success as director of special education we are confident in her ability to lead our programs with excellence and are proud to bring this recommendation before the board this evening at this time I open it up for discussion no real discussion other than to
140confirm you know I was on the hiring committee um for this department and um to make this recommendation awesome yeah you know I absolutely agree with you Dave that bringing in a director specifically for special ed is we absolutely need in the district um to increase the access and availability of higher education special ed needs so um I at this time will move to hire Alli as the director of special education and I will second yes congratulations all right at this time recommendation the governing board will present the recommendation for the director of student services we are pleased to recommend Mr charles Keller for the position of director of student services for the Lake Havisu Unified School District mr keller currently serves as the K through 12 K12 assistant principal at the NY County School
141District bringing 25 years of experience with him in education profession he has held a wide range of roles from classroom teacher to district superintendent and remains deeply committed to education his dedication is rooted in sincere belief that students are a vital asset to the future of our communities mr keller earned a bachelor of science and secondary education from the University of Nevada Reno and a master's degree in curriculum and instruction from the University of Nevada Las Vegas in 2010 he completed his educational specialist degree in leadership from Nova Southeastern University completing his leadership internship while serving as a chair of a nine-person science department at the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts in Las Vegas Nevada mr keller spent nine years teaching physical science at the secondary level a role he deeply rewarding uh rewarded
142in 2014 he transitioned into a site administration and In 2017 he advanced to district level leadership serving as a superintendent and a K12 principal in a small rural Kansas community during the CO9 pandemic school closures in March 2020 Mr keller led his district through unprecedented challenges he worked to ensure that students had access to learning tools food services and as much stability as possible possible during a nationwide uncertainty mr keller's philosophy regarding education is simple the students are limitless tests to which we hold all our decisions they should always come first their learning opportunities their enrichment their safety and their security his leadership's philosophy is that setting an example demonstrating character and providing mentorship is key to bringing a team along rather than managing with authority he is wholeheartedly agrees with Lake Havsu Unified School
143District's mission of scholarship character and humanity and is prepared to support initiatives that utilize these pillars to build a foundation of strong citizens for this community and its future the pride he takes watching his own two children navigate their educational journeys and adventure into adulthood inspires him in his continued efforts to have a positive impact on students as the son of the school administrator Mr mr keller strives to implement the example his father set for him by demonstrating patience consistency and accountability in his daily professional life mr keller's hope is to continue to positively impact learning by serving this district for years to come we are confident that his ability to lead our student services program with excellence and are proud to bring this recommendation before the board this evening i'm now open for discussion
144again no real discussion about it except that I was also on this um committee we rotated as board members so we can have two two board members per committee um so I was I served on this one as well and I um Mr kelly does have my support yeah um I actually have the opportunity to serve on this committee as well and I think that this candidate is going to bring something to this department that is needed um we know that student services has been kind of an issue and uh we're looking forward to the work and experience that he is going to bring to um as he said to partner alongside those individuals that work in that department as well as partnering with partnering with our principles and school district staff so um at
145this time if there's no other discussion I call for a motion i'll move to hire Charles Keller as the director of student services i have a second yes yes yes and item 6.8 governing board the governing board will present the recommendation for the director of student achievement we are pleased to recommend Dr mary Bethl for the position of director of student achievement for the Lake Addison Unified School District dr bethl has served in education for the past 20 years and a variety of roles that have prepared her for the role of student achievement director for the Lake Addison Unified School District her career began as a high school English and read 180 teacher for the first nine years before she transitioned into administration mary has served as an academic dean assistant principal and an intermediate
146school testing coordinator ELA instructional coach and a director of literacy prek she earned a bachelor's in English with a minor in communication from the University of Houston in 2000 followed by a master's in education administration in 2018 from the Lamar University most recently she continued her studies in a doctoral program in literacy at the University of Texas San Antonio and will be graduating this month mary's experience in developing and facil facilitating professional learning community protocols will play pivotal role this upcoming school year as we expand our support at the school coaching level and evaluate student achievement results her experience with multi-tered systems of support and effective interventions to support students who are approaching the standard or far above the standard will help us continue to provide the most exceptional education possible for all learners her
147vision for partnering with parents as students transition from elementary school to middle school to high school will support our students in maintaining academic excellence during the entirety of while they're here in Lake Haps Unified School District outside of work Mary Bethl is a mother of two and enjoys researching to provide a better understanding of an issue and collaborating to find solutions we're excited to bring Dr bethl's vast training education and experience to our student achievement department and are thrilled to bring this recommendation before the board this evening um I actually um sat in on uh both of us set in together on this um interview process on this committee and um I can tell you I was very impressed um by this candidate and her experience and um definitely looking forward to working with her
148yeah yeah her her experience was exceptional um and definitely we are going to be weaponizing her and getting her laser focused on getting us attuned with the state standards and bringing our proficiency ups and getting the the outcomes that we want for our students um we will get the proficiencies up and I know Mary Beth is going to be a great part of that okay any other discussion and I was not a part of this committee um but it is important to me when I say yes or no from this platform that my um yeses mean based on solid information i was able to have um a discussion with our director of human resources and I'm I feel confident that the process was conducted fairly and impartially and um I'm I can give a confident
149yes for this candidate awesome so I will move to hire Mary Bethl as the director of student achievement a second yes yes yes all right at this time informationational item 7.1 superintendent Dr skinner yes and Carol tried to you know steal my thunder i don't know if she's still here or not but So we had you know principal appreciation day was May 1st and then of course our teacher appreciation week is this week so we just want to make sure that we honor and recognize the hard work and dedication they put in so many hours so if you're still here we'd love for you to give a big hoot and holler or clap to our teachers and our principles and our teachers our teachers yeah uh so we just Yeah we just want to extend
150our gratitude they've just done so much um and we're just so proud of them they go above and beyond uh every day uh of course the month of May is just quite busy and awards ceremonies i think uh tonight this week has been oh gosh 8:30 six day it's been a long one with awards and we're just so proud of our students walking across those stages getting you know all of the certificates for excellence and achievement we're just so proud of them and of course we have our graduation coming up on May 22nd i know i was just making sure you May 22nd so please join us so lots going on this month so again it's just a busy busy time and we just appreciate everyone supporting all right thank you now at this time
151item 7.2 two governing board members um comments suggestions or future agenda items just a suggestion that um we if our board wants to go forward with hiring a director of um financial services and I know that right now we have an outside provider um but their contract expires July 1st which is going to be here before we know it so if that's something we want to go forward with um I think we should post that as soon as possible yes I agree no I agree um in that um look forward to seeing um what is you know who potentially would be interested but also think that we need to weigh out um there there's plus and minuses to both um so for those of you who who are here this evening we have currently outsourced
152um the director of business services position um to a firm that only works with school districts um matter of fact this firm also um has worked with the department of education in the state a lot of experience um and and in that though there is something to having that person that you can walk into the office and say "Hey can you know can we have a conversation what does this look like?" Um and they and someone that actually knows our community and understands who we are um so yes absolutely i think that is important to folks yeah and and definitely if we bring it back house we need to have a serious look at how we structure the authority of that individual having checks and balances so that we don't end up in the same
153situation with one individual saying you have a little bit too much control over the finances um and being able to shift things that aren't visible so it I definitely have a think we post to a CFO more of a chief financial officer a different type of background i think that was one of the things I heard so so that definitely needs something to look at maybe a work session that we come in and discuss that see how we want to structure it but I think theoretically obviously absolutely So do you want it posted or do you want to have a work session i want to make sure have a work session to figure out exactly what we discuss job description job description is a big one yeah absolutely yes yeah so a work session to
154work out job description and then post then to post it absolutely and then the only other thing on my radar right now is um AR i've been getting a lot of emails about accelerated reader so I think that's something we should talk about if we want to bring it back absolutely and I know right now um we are waiting to receive data back um and so we we are going to look at those things i can tell you and and I will be very um transparent um and having so when I traveled and and met with principles um and said hey and teachers what are some things that that you're interested in and AR was was one of them for some folks and when I brought that back to to Dr stone uh Dr stone
155informed me she was not interested in accelerated reader um that that is something that they had taken out and there was a reason for that so I think we really need to look at the data um she was interested in other programs that she felt um helped improve reading skills better than they are um so I think that is a conversation that that we need to have um because improving reading is important um but also respect the opinion of our superintendent who is leading the district and uh we we want to make sure we do what is best for kids and we want everyone's feedback you know we are we are all here and we all want the same results we all want kids to be proficient in reading and all things and sometimes we
156all have different opinions of how we get there and we need to be willing to hear each other out and to have those conversations and to look at the data and see what works and what doesn't so I look forward to those conversations yeah and just a quick note on that you know comfortable is not always better um you know talking to some people about accelerated reader perhaps doesn't give the best data points and If we do move away from accelerated reader we're not saying we're not going to have any program we are going to have something that gives us data on where we are at where we need to improve and hopefully makes our students better there is proficiency issues here what was used before has not produced the results and so part of
157us being brought in and elected was to change things in this district we have given a lot of input and heard a lot from you guys changed some things left some other things up like the calendar um you know right off the bat but We're going to take your input but we again we are going to make the best decision we believe to increase the proficiencies and the outcomes of our students pretty much nothing else and so if it's not helping our students it's going to go the byway so that's there yeah I think those conversations are important to working together and uh Okay any other discussion it is just a few weeks away and school is over um you've made it another year teachers administrators counselors everybody it is almost over just a few
158weeks and then you start working in the next year and just know that you're appreciated thank you for all of your hard work that you do to make our kids successful you're appreciated have an amazing rest of your school year i motion at this time to adjourn a second yes yes yes good night